Greece struggles with solar energy overload
KASTRON VIOTIAS: In a field in central Greece that once grew clover and corn, maintenance worker Nikos Zigomitros deftly drives a tractor between rows of solar panels, trimming weeds under a blazing sun. "Letting them grow too high impairs the panel performance," the 52-year-old explains, wiping sweat from his brow. Once a centre of agricultural production, the area around Kastron Viotias, some 110 kilometers northwest of Athens, has seen solar parks mushroom over the past 15 years, part of a major renewable energy push in the country.
Greece currently has 16 gigawatts of renewable energy installed, with solar power representing nearly 10 gigawatts, including 2.5 gigawatts that came on line last year. The rapid growth of solar is similar to other countries in Europe, where it has overtaken coal for electricity production, according to climate think tank Ember. It estimates renewables have risen to account for nearly half of the EU's electricity production.
Greece did even better: 55 percent of annual consumption was covered by renewables last year, with solar accounting for around 23 percent, according to SPEF, an association which unites local solar power producers. In 2023, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis predicted that Greece would "soon generate 80 percent of its electricity needs through renewables." But getting there is proving complicated. SPEF chairman Stelios Loumakis said that the solar sector has hit a wall because of a combination of factors, including Greece's small size, limited infrastructure and delays in building up energy storage capacity.
Saturated
The Greek state approved too many photovoltaic projects over the last five years and the market is saturated, leading to a "severe production surplus" on sunny days, the 56-year-old chemical engineer and energy consultant said. Greece's national grid operator in May repeatedly ordered thousands of medium-sized operators to shut down during the sunniest hours of the day to avoid overburdening the network and triggering a blackout.
"The trick is to balance supply and demand. If you don't do it well, you get a blackout," said Nikos Mantzaris, a senior policy analyst and partner at the independent civil organisation Green Tank. In April, a huge blackout of unknown origin crippled the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish government has said two major power fluctuations were recorded in the half-hour before the grid collapse, but the government insisted renewables were not to blame. "It could be something as mundane as a faulty cable," Mantzaris said.
Batteries 'crucial'
To manage the surplus, Greece is building battery storage capacity. But catching up to its solar electricity production will take years. "The next three years will be crucial," said Stelios Psomas, a policy advisor at HELAPCO, a trade association for Greek companies producing and installing solar panels. In the meantime, solar panel operators will have to ensure production does not outstrip capacity, thereby limiting their potential earnings. "Managing high shares of renewables - especially solar - requires significant flexibility and storage solutions," said Francesca Andreolli, a senior researcher at ECCO, a climate change think tank in Italy, which faces a similar problem. "Battery capacity has become a structural necessity for the electricity system, by absorbing excess renewable energy and releasing it when demand rises," she told AFP.
Farm income
Mimis Tsakanikas, a 51-year-old farmer in Kastron, readily admits that solar has been good to his family. The photovoltaic farm they built in 2012 at a cost of 210,000 euros clears at least 55,000 euros a year, far more than he could hope to earn by growing vegetables and watermelons. "This park sustains my home," he said.
But the father of two also notes that the environmental balance has tipped in his area, with the spread of solar installations now causing concerns about the local microclimate. Tsakanikas says the area has already experienced temperature rises of up to 4.0 degrees Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit), which he blames on the abundance of heat-absorbing solar panel parks in the area. "The microclimate has definitely changed, we haven't seen frost in two years," he told AFP. "(At this rate) in five years, we'll be cultivating bananas here, like in Crete," he said.- AFP
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Kuwait Times
7 hours ago
- Kuwait Times
Egypt's crackdown drives refugees on new route to Libya and beyond
Sudanese refugees increasingly fleeing to Libya from Egypt CAIRO: Bahr El-Din Yakoub fled Sudan to seek sanctuary in Egypt after a missile ripped through his home in Khartoum and killed four of his friends. But economic hardship and a crackdown on refugees in Egypt pushed him onwards, first along dangerous desert smuggling routes into northeastern Libya, and then on the perilous sea crossing to the Greek island of Crete. Yakoub, 25, is one of a small but growing number of Sudanese refugees who are giving up on Egypt and taking their chances in Libya, rather than returning home where civil war has been raging since April 2023, according to migrants, smugglers, aid workers and activists. While the flight of tens of thousands of Sudanese to Libya via their common border has been documented, the trend of Sudanese nationals feeling they have no option but to take the northern route out of Egypt has not previously been reported. For this story, Reuters spoke with 32 Sudanese refugees. While a few are still in Egypt, most described how they had moved on due to the difficult conditions there, making it to Libya, Greece and France. And as more Sudanese head to Libya, where the situation can be precarious for refugees, more are boarding boats for Europe. In the first five months of 2025, the number of Sudanese nationals arriving in Europe jumped 134 percent from a year earlier, even as overall numbers of people crossing from North Africa declined, according to preliminary figures from the UN's refugee agency UNHCR. 'The sea was rough and it was a very difficult trip, but we were exhausted by all that we endured in Libya. We had no other choice, either we cross or die,' Yakoub said, adding that he had been detained, arrested and ill-treated by Libyan authorities and militias. Europe has supported the Libyan coastguard, which returns migrants stopped at sea to detention centers, and has funded Libyan border management programs. A UN fact-finding mission concluded in 2023 that crimes against humanity had been committed against migrants in some Libyan detention centers. Major General Ibrahim Al-Arbd, head of Libya's Department to Combat Illegal Migration in the eastern Libyan district of Al-Butnan, said as of January, 20,000-25,000 Sudanese had crossed into Libya via Egypt since the Sudan war started. He said many of them held refugee status in Egypt but had struggled to settle there due to economic hardship. He said in May that 200-250 Sudanese were crossing per week and, as summer approaches, he expected the number to rise. 'Safety beyond Egypt' Since the war between Sudan's army and the Rapid Support Forces started, more than 4 million Sudanese have been driven into neighboring countries, according to UNHCR. By far the largest number, 1.5 million, fled north to Egypt. Although Egypt initially allowed visa-free entry for all but working-age Sudanese men, it limited entries after a surge in arrivals, leading to more refugees using smuggling routes to reach the country, according to migrants, migration lawyers and aid workers. Securing residency in Egypt - a crucial step for obtaining access to basic services such as health and education - also became increasingly difficult, with significant delays and financial barriers, they said. Egypt's Foreign Ministry and State Information Service (SIS) did not respond to requests for comment. Mahmoud Fawzi, Egypt's Minister of Parliamentary and Legal Affairs and Political Communication, denied any restrictions had been placed on issuing residency permits to Sudanese migrants. For many, the process, which required a deposit of about $1,000 under an August 2023 decree, was unaffordable, leaving them living on the fringes of society. Some instead undertook the lengthy project of acquiring UN refugee status. But a government crackdown last year put those who had not paid at risk of being rounded up or deported, regardless of their refugee status, according to three migration lawyers in Egypt who have handled hundreds of such cases. Rights groups and migration lawyers said there has been an increase in deportations from Egypt since the passage of a new asylum law at the end of 2024 which placed refugee approval and registration under government control instead of the UNHCR. 'The sense of insecurity created by this new situation among refugees and asylum seekers, combined with their inability to return to their own country, has led them to seek safety beyond Egypt, facing the perils of further migration,' said Mohamed Lotfy, director of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms, a non-governmental organization in Egypt. Fawzi said there was no bias against Sudanese nationals and they receive all their rights. He said no deportations happen unless people violate the law, or choose to return home. 'No way I could stay' After leaving Khartoum a few weeks into the war, Yakoub moved three times in search of safety within Sudan. When he couldn't find refuge, he paid smugglers to take him to Egypt. He believed the three-day journey across the desert would lead him to safety and stability, but life in Egypt proved difficult. After arriving in Cairo in January 2024, he slept on cold streets for days, waiting to register with UNHCR. Eventually, he gave up, saying the waiting time was too long. He moved into a small apartment with eight other Sudanese men and worked sporadically as a day laborer. Still, without proper documentation, he risked arrest as authorities began rounding up migrants without papers and deporting them. 'The conditions there were not suitable for a refugee ... I did not have the proper documentation, and I was running from the authorities all the time. There was no way I could stay,' he said, speaking to Reuters from a migrant camp outside Athens. 'I was afraid of getting arrested and being sent back to Sudan, so I went to Libya,' he said, 'But I found the situation there much worse.' Critics of the asylum law say its criteria for determining refugee status are vague and it jeopardizes the legal protection of those already recognized as refugees - including those with UNHCR documentation. Lotfy, whose organization provides legal support to migrants, said the new law appeared to have emboldened security forces further, with a rise in police reports and cases against Sudanese and sub-Saharan Africans. His organization has documented dozens of cases where police confiscated UNHCR papers before deporting refugees, he said. Egypt's Fawzi denied any refugees or asylum seekers registered with UNHCR had been deported. Numbers of deportations are not made public but according to two Egyptian security sources speaking on condition of anonymity, the security services had deported nearly 21,000 Sudanese, as of the end of March 2025, for their illegal presence or for violating Egypt's laws. Rights group Amnesty International has also documented the detention of migrants in Egypt in what it called cruel and inhuman conditions ahead of such deportations, which it says violate international law. 'Using the migration card' Egyptian officials say the government has shown generosity by absorbing so many Sudanese despite economic pressures such as double-digit inflation and a dollar crunch. Fawzi said everyone benefits from national subsidy schemes. Migrants in Egypt who spoke to Reuters disputed this, as did an internal EU commission report in 2024 seen by Reuters. It said about 1.5 million of the 9 million migrants Egypt says it has taken in were in vulnerable situations. Of them, nearly 1 million were registered as refugees and asylum seekers as of May 2025, according to the UNHCR. — Reuters 'Migrants and refugees are not entitled to domestic subsidy schemes or social protection programs and a large number of them have become food insecure,' the report said, adding that this had prompted many to move onwards. Five Western diplomats and EU officials said Cairo has attempted to pressure Brussels into increasing financial aid - in exchange for stopping migrants from heading to Europe. Tineke Strik, a member of the European Parliament and rapporteur for Egypt, said during a visit in December she met Fawzi and he asked her, 'Imagine if our border guards took a four-week holiday. What would happen then?' 'They are really using the migration card to get money from the EU,' Strik said. Fawzi declined to comment. In March, the EU announced a 7.4 billion euro funding package for Egypt as part of a push to stem migrant flows. Anti-immigration rhetoric has surged throughout the EU since more than a million people, mainly from Syria, arrived via the Mediterranean in 2015. This hostility has been exploited by right-wing and nationalist parties, pushing governments to adopt increasingly restrictive migration policies focused on returns. In recent months, the EU and member states have proposed policies criticized by human rights group to accelerate deportations and send migrants to hubs in third-party countries with which migrants have no connection. Two months after arriving in Libya, Yakoub boarded a dinghy bound for Crete with about 50 other people, mostly Sudanese. The Eastern Mediterranean route he took was the second most active route into the EU from January to April, with 12,228 people crossing, the EU's border agency Frontex said. The Central Mediterranean route to Italy and Malta was the most active. Though the Eastern route has seen a year-on-year decline in traffic, the number of Sudanese has surged to among the top three nationalities from January to May, totaling about 1,469 people, according to Frontex. This represents a significant rise from 361 during the same period last year and 237 the year before. Yakoub said he was relieved to be safe finally in Greece, and to start thinking about the future. 'If Greece offers me safety and stability, I will stay.'— Reuters
Kuwait Times
a day ago
- Kuwait Times
Greece struggles with solar energy overload
KASTRON VIOTIAS: In a field in central Greece that once grew clover and corn, maintenance worker Nikos Zigomitros deftly drives a tractor between rows of solar panels, trimming weeds under a blazing sun. "Letting them grow too high impairs the panel performance," the 52-year-old explains, wiping sweat from his brow. Once a centre of agricultural production, the area around Kastron Viotias, some 110 kilometers northwest of Athens, has seen solar parks mushroom over the past 15 years, part of a major renewable energy push in the country. Greece currently has 16 gigawatts of renewable energy installed, with solar power representing nearly 10 gigawatts, including 2.5 gigawatts that came on line last year. The rapid growth of solar is similar to other countries in Europe, where it has overtaken coal for electricity production, according to climate think tank Ember. It estimates renewables have risen to account for nearly half of the EU's electricity production. Greece did even better: 55 percent of annual consumption was covered by renewables last year, with solar accounting for around 23 percent, according to SPEF, an association which unites local solar power producers. In 2023, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis predicted that Greece would "soon generate 80 percent of its electricity needs through renewables." But getting there is proving complicated. SPEF chairman Stelios Loumakis said that the solar sector has hit a wall because of a combination of factors, including Greece's small size, limited infrastructure and delays in building up energy storage capacity. Saturated The Greek state approved too many photovoltaic projects over the last five years and the market is saturated, leading to a "severe production surplus" on sunny days, the 56-year-old chemical engineer and energy consultant said. Greece's national grid operator in May repeatedly ordered thousands of medium-sized operators to shut down during the sunniest hours of the day to avoid overburdening the network and triggering a blackout. "The trick is to balance supply and demand. If you don't do it well, you get a blackout," said Nikos Mantzaris, a senior policy analyst and partner at the independent civil organisation Green Tank. In April, a huge blackout of unknown origin crippled the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish government has said two major power fluctuations were recorded in the half-hour before the grid collapse, but the government insisted renewables were not to blame. "It could be something as mundane as a faulty cable," Mantzaris said. Batteries 'crucial' To manage the surplus, Greece is building battery storage capacity. But catching up to its solar electricity production will take years. "The next three years will be crucial," said Stelios Psomas, a policy advisor at HELAPCO, a trade association for Greek companies producing and installing solar panels. In the meantime, solar panel operators will have to ensure production does not outstrip capacity, thereby limiting their potential earnings. "Managing high shares of renewables - especially solar - requires significant flexibility and storage solutions," said Francesca Andreolli, a senior researcher at ECCO, a climate change think tank in Italy, which faces a similar problem. "Battery capacity has become a structural necessity for the electricity system, by absorbing excess renewable energy and releasing it when demand rises," she told AFP. Farm income Mimis Tsakanikas, a 51-year-old farmer in Kastron, readily admits that solar has been good to his family. The photovoltaic farm they built in 2012 at a cost of 210,000 euros clears at least 55,000 euros a year, far more than he could hope to earn by growing vegetables and watermelons. "This park sustains my home," he said. But the father of two also notes that the environmental balance has tipped in his area, with the spread of solar installations now causing concerns about the local microclimate. Tsakanikas says the area has already experienced temperature rises of up to 4.0 degrees Celsius (7.2 Fahrenheit), which he blames on the abundance of heat-absorbing solar panel parks in the area. "The microclimate has definitely changed, we haven't seen frost in two years," he told AFP. "(At this rate) in five years, we'll be cultivating bananas here, like in Crete," he said.- AFP
Arab Times
2 days ago
- Arab Times
Macron plans social media ban for under-15s in France if EU fails to act
PARIS, France, June 11: French President Emmanuel Macron announced on Tuesday that if the European Union does not make progress soon, France will ban social media use for children under 15 within the coming months. Speaking after a fatal stabbing of a teaching assistant at a high school in Nogent, Haute-Marne, Macron emphasized the urgency of acting faster than the broader EU efforts led by Greece, France, and Spain to limit teenagers' online screen time. Macron also revealed plans to introduce strict age verification on websites selling knives, similar to existing controls on adult content sites. He stated that minors under 15 will no longer be able to purchase knives online, with heavy financial penalties and bans for violations. Earlier, Prime Minister François Bayrou had called for an immediate ban on all knife sales to minors. Later that evening, Macron posted on the social media platform X: 'I'm banning social media for children under 15. Platforms have the ability to verify age. Let's do it.' French authorities are already pushing certain social media platforms, including X, Reddit, Bluesky, and Mastodon, to implement age verification by reclassifying them alongside pornographic sites. This follows recent legislation requiring adult sites to verify users' ages, which led Pornhub to cease operations in France and caused a surge in VPN usage to bypass restrictions. The president linked social media use to the rise in youth violence, referring to the stabbing incident where a 14-year-old student was questioned after fatally attacking a 31-year-old school aide during a weapons search. Prime Minister Bayrou highlighted that such violent episodes are part of a worrying trend, not isolated cases. Macron's stance aligns with global movements to restrict minors' access to social media. For instance, Australia implemented a ban on social media for those under 16 last year, setting a strong precedent in regulating Big Tech. Macron expressed hope for EU-wide action soon but affirmed France's readiness to proceed independently if necessary, underlining, 'We cannot wait.'
